Ancient Indian Historical Tradition
Author : Frederick Eden Pargiter
Publisher :
Page : 388 pages
File Size : 37,2 MB
Release : 1922
Category : India
ISBN :
Author : Frederick Eden Pargiter
Publisher :
Page : 388 pages
File Size : 37,2 MB
Release : 1922
Category : India
ISBN :
Author : Romila Thapar
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 778 pages
File Size : 15,44 MB
Release : 2013-10-14
Category : History
ISBN : 0674726510
The claim that India--uniquely among civilizations--lacks historical writing distracts us from a more pertinent question: how to recognize the historical sense of societies whose past is recorded in ways very different from European conventions. Romila Thapar, a distinguished scholar of ancient India, guides us through a panoramic survey of the historical traditions of North India, revealing a deep and sophisticated consciousness of history embedded in the diverse body of classical Indian literature. The history recorded in such texts as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata is less concerned with authenticating persons and events than with presenting a picture of traditions striving to retain legitimacy amid social change. Spanning an epoch from 1000 BCE to 1400 CE, Thapar delineates three strains of historical writing: an Itihasa-Purana tradition of Brahman authors; a tradition composed mainly by Buddhist and Jaina monks and scholars; and a popular bardic tradition. The Vedic corpus, the epics, the Buddhist canon and monastic chronicles, inscriptional evidence, regional accounts, and literary forms such as royal biographies and drama are all scrutinized afresh--not as sources to be mined for factual data but as genres that disclose how Indians of ancient times represented their own past to themselves.
Author : Romila Thapar
Publisher : Orient Blackswan
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 39,18 MB
Release : 1978
Category : India
ISBN : 9788125008088
A collection of papers that interprets afresh, known facts about the early period of Indian history up to the end of the first millennium AD. The papers discuss several associated themes such as society and religion, social classification and mobility and the study of regional history. A useful reference book for postgraduate students of History.
Author : Kanad Sinha
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 576 pages
File Size : 50,95 MB
Release : 2022-01-18
Category :
ISBN : 9780190130695
Is it true that the ancient Indians had no sense of History? The book begins with this question, and points out how the ways of perceiving the past could be culture-specific and how the concept of historical traditions can be useful in studying the various ways of memorising and representing the past, even if those ways do not necessarily correspond to the methodology of the Occidental discipline called 'History'. Ancient India had several historical traditions, and the book focuses on one of them, the itihasa. It also shows how the Mahabharata is the best illustration of this tradition, and how a historical study of the contents of the text, with comparison with and corroboration from other contemporary sources and traditions, may help us restore the text in its original context in the bardic historical tradition about the Later Vedic Kurus. Is the Mahabharata then an authentic history? This book does not claim so. However, it shows how the text had originated as a critical reflection on a great period of transition, how it dealt with the conflicting philosophies of the transitional period, how it propounded its thesis by creating new kinds of heroes such as Yudhisthira and Krsna, and how the text was reworked when it was canonized by the brahmanas
Author : Romila Thapar
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 598 pages
File Size : 37,10 MB
Release : 2004-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520242258
This new book represents a complete rewriting by the author of her A History of India, vol. 1. Includes bibliographical references (p. 542-544) and index.
Author : Upinder Singh
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 617 pages
File Size : 21,81 MB
Release : 2017-09-25
Category : History
ISBN : 0674981286
Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru helped create the myth of a nonviolent ancient India while building a modern independence movement on the principle of nonviolence (ahimsa). But this myth obscures a troubled and complex heritage: a long struggle to reconcile the ethics of nonviolence with the need to use violence to rule. Upinder Singh documents the dynamic tension between violence and nonviolence in ancient Indian political thought and practice over twelve hundred years. Political Violence in Ancient India looks at representations of kingship and political violence in epics, religious texts, political treatises, plays, poems, inscriptions, and art from 600 BCE to 600 CE. As kings controlled their realms, fought battles, and meted out justice, intellectuals debated the boundary between the force required to sustain power and the excess that led to tyranny and oppression. Duty (dharma) and renunciation were important in this discussion, as were punishment, war, forest tribes, and the royal hunt. Singh reveals a range of perspectives that defy rigid religious categorization. Buddhists, Jainas, and even the pacifist Maurya emperor Ashoka recognized that absolute nonviolence was impossible for kings. By 600 CE religious thinkers, political theorists, and poets had justified and aestheticized political violence to a great extent. Nevertheless, questions, doubt, and dissent remained. These debates are as important for understanding political ideas in the ancient world as for thinking about the problem of political violence in our own time.
Author : D D Kosambi
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 251 pages
File Size : 42,3 MB
Release : 2022-09-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1000653471
First published in 1965, The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline is a strikingly original work, the first real cultural history of India. The main features of the Indian character are traced back into remote antiquity as the natural outgrowth of historical process. Did the change from food gathering and the pastoral life to agriculture make new religions necessary? Why did the Indian cities vanish with hardly a trace and leave no memory? Who were the Aryans – if any? Why should Buddhism, Jainism, and so many other sects of the same type come into being at one time and in the same region? How could Buddhism spread over so large a part of Asia while dying out completely in the land of its origin? What caused the rise and collapse of the Magadhan empire; was the Gupta empire fundamentally different from its great predecessor, or just one more ‘oriental despotism’? These are some of the many questions handled with great insight, yet in the simplest terms, in this stimulating work. This book will be of interest to students of history, sociology, archaeology, anthropology, cultural studies, South Asian studies and ethnic studies.
Author : Peter Nabokov
Publisher :
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 14,37 MB
Release : 1987
Category : Social Science
ISBN :
"Indian Running is an eyewitness account of the 6-day, Taos, N.M., to Second Mesa, Hopi, Ariz., 1980 Tricentennial Run commemorating the Pueblo Indian Revolt. The book describes many Indian running traditions and includes historical photos and 1980 photos by Karl Kernberger. Anthropologist Nabokov's books include "Two Leggings: The Making of a Crow Warrior and "Native American Testimony.
Author : Akira Hirakawa
Publisher : Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
Page : 436 pages
File Size : 34,72 MB
Release : 1993
Category : Buddhism
ISBN : 9788120809550
This comprehensive and detailed survey of the first six centuries of Indian Buddhism sums up the results of a lifetime of research and reflection by one of Japan's most renowned scholars of Buddhism.
Author : Kumkum Roy
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 490 pages
File Size : 41,47 MB
Release : 2009
Category : India
ISBN : 0810853663
India's history and culture is ancient and dynamic, spanning back to the beginning of human civilization. Beginning with a mysterious culture along the Indus River and in farming communities in the southern lands of India, the history of India is punctuated by constant integration with migrating peoples and with the diverse cultures that surround the country. Placed in the center of Asia, history in India is a crossroads of cultures from China to Europe, as well as the most significant Asian connection with the cultures of Africa. The Historical Dictionary of Ancient India provides information ranging from the earliest Paleolithic cultures in the Indian subcontinent to 1000 CE. The ancient history of this country is related in this book through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on rulers, bureaucrats, ancient societies, religion, gods, and philosophical ideas.